{"id":6239,"date":"2011-02-21T06:53:54","date_gmt":"2011-02-21T14:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/?p=6239"},"modified":"2014-02-02T16:28:49","modified_gmt":"2014-02-03T00:28:49","slug":"theologians-lobby-successfully-to-change-definition-of-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/21\/theologians-lobby-successfully-to-change-definition-of-evolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Theologians Lobby Successfully to Change Definition of Evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If anyone wants an example of why some of us object strongly to the &#8220;accommodationist&#8221; strategy of downplaying the incompatibility of science and (many types of) religious belief, <a href=\"http:\/\/whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com\/2011\/02\/21\/natural-selection-and-evolution-material-blind-mindless-and-purposeless\/\">Jerry Coyne&#8217;s blog post<\/a> will help you out.  A bit too much, actually &#8212; the more you really think about it, the angrier it will make you feel.  No wonder why these atheists are all so strident!<\/p>\n<p>Apparently the National Association of Biology Teachers <strike>characterizes<\/strike> used to characterize the theory of evolution in the following way:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The diversity of life on earth is the result of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s a good description, because it&#8217;s true.  But some religious thinkers, along with their enablers within the scientific establishment, <a href=\"http:\/\/ncse.com\/religion\/science-religion-methodology-humanism\">objected<\/a> to the parts about &#8220;unsupervised&#8221; and &#8220;impersonal,&#8221; because they seemed to exclude the possibility that the process was designed or guided by God.  Which they do!  Because that&#8217;s what the theory of evolution says, and that theory is far and away our best understanding of the data.  (<a href=\"http:\/\/https:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/17\/dysteleological-physicalism\/\">Dysteleological physicalism<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>The shocking part of the story is that the objectors won.  The National Association of Biology Teachers officially changed their description of evolution, to better accommodate the views of theologians.<\/p>\n<p>This isn&#8217;t a brand new story, but I had never heard it before.  Jerry seems a lot more calm about it than I am, so you should read <a href=\"http:\/\/whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com\/2011\/02\/21\/natural-selection-and-evolution-material-blind-mindless-and-purposeless\/\">his post<\/a> for more.  I&#8217;ll just quote one short paragraph from him:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In my classes, however, I still characterize evolution and selection as processes lacking mind, purpose, or supervision.  Why? Because, as far as we can see, that\u2019s the truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/https:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/19\/the-truth-still-matters\/\">The truth still matters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If anyone wants an example of why some of us object strongly to the &#8220;accommodationist&#8221; strategy of downplaying the incompatibility of science and (many types of) religious belief, Jerry Coyne&#8217;s blog post will help you out. A bit too much, actually &#8212; the more you really think about it, the angrier it will make you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","category-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11666,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6239\/revisions\/11666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}